Adjustable seats designed for modes of transportation for conveyance of passengers are known in the prior art. DE 100 19 484 A1, for example, discloses such a seat intended especially for use as an aircraft passenger seat in passenger aircraft.
On very long trips, such as on long-distance flights and for passages aboard a ship, for example, a ferry, a general object of aircraft or ferry outfitters to increase the comfort of the seat users and the passengers to be transported. Especially in first class and business class, the customer has the corresponding wishes to be satisfied. The trend includes the desire of passengers to be able to use the travel time for useful resting or for sleeping, for example, to effectively counteract fatigue phenomena at the destination in long-distance flights or the like.
To meet these demands, efforts are being made to configure the adjustment means and the interacting seat components such that diverse, individually triggerable adjustment positions especially for the seat part and seat back are made available to the seat occupant to adapt the overall seating system to his/her requirements. A comfortable resting or sleeping position can be made available to the seat occupant, in which the seat part in the travel direction (flight direction) is pushed comparatively far forward and the seat back can be tilted back low to the rear within the shell body. An essentially elongated shape necessarily arises for the shell body, with its rear area forming the rear enclosure of the seat back.
This design leads to seat configurations in which the seat part is in a position shifted correspondingly far forward and the seat back is in the upright starting position, as is prescribed in flight operation, for example, during taxiing, take-off and landing, where an intermediate space is caused between the rear enclosure and the seat back. This intermediate space forms a gap between the lower end area of the seat back and the adjacent wall areas of the shell body. The presence of a gap in this area leads to the fact that, beyond the edge of the rear enclosure on the shell body, there is the possibility of access to the area of the bearing structure of the seat part located underneath the bottom end of the seat back. In this area underneath the seat bottom, there are however the kinematics of the seat adjustment means, for example, upright seat legs or toggle lever arrangements which can pivot and which belong to the adjustment mechanism. This arrangement results in the danger that articles, such as drinking vessels, bottles, beverage cans, or the like which accidentally fall over the edge of the enclosure into the shell body pass through the gaps into the region of these kinematics and lead to malfunctions or damage the mechanisms. Additionally, there is the danger that individuals, for example, children at play, can reach into the gaps which have formed and possibly injure themselves on the moving parts of the kinematics.